9-year-old silenced at council meeting

LANSING – The Lansing City Council Monday dished up the wrong kind of civics lesson to a fourth-grader. Charli Collison, 9, tagged along with her mother, Kelly Collison, to a Monday council meeting to protest the construction of a new Groesbeck Golf Course entrance through Ormond Park. A judge halted the construction after a lawsuit was filed.

When Council President Patricia Spitzley asked if anyone else wanted to speak at the end of the public comment portion of the committee-of-the-whole meeting, five hands went up. Spitzley allowed the four adults to talk but said “No” to Charli. “I have strong feelings about the role of children and what their role should be. I don’t believe that 9-year-old children should be giving public comment. I just don’t,” Spitzley said in a phone interview Wednesday.

At the meeting on Monday, Charli started to cry after being told she couldn't share her views on the park with council members. “I cried because I was sad I couldn’t talk about the reasons I had for Ormond Park to be saved,” Charli told me in a phone interview.

She said her father, who now lives in East Lansing, used to live near Ormond Park and she played there frequently. A small rock-climbing wall that's been knocked down for construction was a highlight. She'll be a fourth-grade student at Glencairn School in East Lansing in the fall. “I wanted to tell them that kids should have a chance to come to Ormond Park and climb on the rock wall and play on the structures,” she said.

Read more at Lansing State Journal